“I fucking love actresses,” said Julianne Moore at this year’s Kering Women in Motion Awards gala. It was there that she made a passionate case for the need for more women’s stories. The Oscar winner was presented the award on May 17 at a packed Place de la Castre in Cannes.
It’s our future, it’s our stories, and “I fucking love actresses,” Moore said, as the observer understood a rallying cry.
“I want to know where they feel invisible, why they feel invisible, and have we been cultured to only be seen by a particular audience,”
“I’m also curious at times when I don’t want to be seen, when I want to avoid any gaze, and that’s a lot of the time.”
Moore
The Women in Motion award started in 2015, launched by Kering, an official partner of the Cannes Film Festival. It goes to female artists that have shined a spotlight on the role of women in cinema, and in society. The award was given to Nicole Kidman last year. Previous winners have included Viola Davis, Isabelle Huppert, Michelle Yeoh, and Jane Fonda, the first recipient.
Cannes Film Festival President Iris Knobloch said of Moore: “For 40 years, she has chosen characters who destabilize, who suffer without resolution, who refuse easy sympathy and in doing so, she has claimed territory on screen that did not exist before she walked into it.” The Women in Motion Award recognizes what she has achieved. And it honors what she has made possible for every actress who comes after her.
Moore is the first American woman to win top acting awards at Berlin, Venice and Cannes. Her work over the last few decades has earned her a place in film history.
Moore shared a red carpet moment with fellow award winner Margherita Spampinato, who won the Emerging Talent Award. The Emerging Talent Award is bestowed upon a female director of her first feature film. The sci-fi Gioia Mia centers on a young boy discovering love, memory, and mystery during an unexpected stay in a seaside Sicilian town. It premiered at the 78th Locarno Film Festival where it won two awards.
In addition to the Emerging Talent Award, Spampinato will receive a 50,000 euro grant to help fund her next feature. “I am grateful and happy to receive the 2026 Women In Motion Emerging Talent Award. This award moves me because it supports the creativity and freedom of new female voices in cinema and the arts around the world,” Spampinato told Women In Motion.
The Emerging Talent Award, which suggests a peer recognition model, was present at the previous award ceremony, and Spampinato was selected by 2025 recipient Marianna Brennand. Brennand called Spampinato “a flawless storyteller” with “a unique, precise way of turning everyday moments into something magical.”
Sharing a spotlight, the two recipients highlighted where the industry has come, and where it still needs to go.
